Genscape
GENSCAPE - ESSENTIAL ENERGY INFORMATION
home‹powerdata resourcesmarket movesabout genscapemedia archive
Australia / Japan
Current Section:  media archive
Press Releases 2003
Genscape Wins Global Energy Award

LOUISVILLE, KY (Dec. 17, 2003) – Genscape, Inc., the nation’s first and only supplier of real time supply side information on power generation, has been named the winner of the 2003 Platts/BusinessWeek Global Energy Award for Information Technology. Genscape representatives were honored with the industry’s most prestigious award at a black tie ceremony on Friday, December 12, 2003, at The Plaza Hotel in New York.

The judges’ rationale for selecting Genscape as the industry’s Information Technology of the Year was based on the reliance of wholesale energy companies, utilities, and state and federal agencies on Genscape’s monitoring and alerting capabilities, including the initial reporting and subsequent investigation of the August 2003 blackout.

Genscape introduced its technology in 2001 and quickly developed a significant following with its web-enabled Power 2.2 service. Genscape’s Power 2.2 features the nation’s only source of real-time data on more than 275 U.S. power plants and transmission points, based on the power flow from nearly 1,300 high-voltage transmission paths.

“Genscape has had a great year,” said Sean O’Leary, Genscape’s CEO, “and this award just validates that. We’ve continued to enhance our domestic power network while looking to expand overseas. We’re also developing technology to monitor other transported fuel types. We certainly appreciate the recognition and look forward to building on our successes in 2004.

GENSCAPE TECHNOLOGY

Genscape Inc. is the only company to have commercialized the provision of real-time power supply information to support decision-making for energy traders, power plant and line owners and operators, regulators, and other energy market participants. Genscape maintains a 40 person staff and an international headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky.

Genscape’s information gathering and distribution system consists of technology to monitor the real-time power output of power plants and load on high-voltage transmission lines. Information reported to customers includes highly accurate estimates of the real-time power output for generating facilities, power flows over strategic transmission paths, and associated information.

GLOBAL ENERGY AWARDS

Each year the Global Energy Awards draw close to 200 nominations from more than a dozen countries around the world. Judges seek commercially inspired innovations that have demonstrated practicality, reliability, and overall commercial success.
The Global Energy Awards are sponsored by Platts, Business Week and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

 


 
What Caused the Power Blackout To Spread So Widely and So Fast?

Genscape’s Unique Data Will Help Answer that Question

Louisville-based Company’s Real-Time Power Grid Data Shows How Blackout “Hop Scotched” Unpredictably and Unexpectedly Throughout Northeast and Midwest

Louisville, KY – (August 15, 2003) When the lights went out all over the Northeast and Midwest on the afternoon of August 14, power companies, federal and state energy regulators, and news organizations all over the country immediately began scrambling to find out what happened.

One person that many of them called was Sean O’Leary, CEO of Genscape, Inc. in Louisville, KY.

Genscape has developed the nation’s only real-time tracking system to measure power flows throughout the U.S. electric grid. The company’s data system was developed for use by the energy industry, and its data is proving valuable to power companies and government agencies as they seek the cause of the huge blackout. Genscape’s data also is helping to present a clear picture of progress in restoration of electric supply in the affected areas.

“Our data-gathering network shows that in the first minute – between 4:09 and 4:10 p.m. Eastern time – power plants hundreds of miles apart in three different states began tripping offline as the grid became unstable," says Mr. O’Leary. In the second minute the blackout spread much farther, “but it was not a simple domino-like failure moving one area to an adjacent geographic area. The failures hop-scotched all around the Northeast and Midwest regions and into Canada,” he says.

“Our unique set of data will help everyone involved find the answer to the most important question – why the systems that were installed to prevent widespread blackouts didn’t function as intended,” Mr. O’Leary says. “We are working with all the parties to increase the availability of our data to maximize the understanding of the source of the blackout event."

Industry and government officials called Genscape because it has the only real-time nation-wide picture of the electric grid, Mr. O’Leary says. “Individual utility companies have good information on what happens within their own service area, but little, if any, data on neighboring utility operations. Only by piecing together the highly detailed operational records from each utility – a process that will take days or weeks – will the industry and regulators be able to piece together a complete picture,” he says.

“That is too long to wait to bring into focus what happened and to begin to understand what to do about it. Our existing monitoring, aggregation, analysis and communications capabilities provide a strong starting point for problem identification and remediation right now...as well as one of the tools to use in preventing and quickly reacting to similar situations in the future.”

Genscape gathers power flow data on a real-time basis at 275 separate locations on the U.S. power grid, providing “eyes” for system operators and government agencies on the status of the nation’s electric system. “Our data gathering system will help the industry to understand the nature of this event and could, in the future, facilitate human intervention to prevent a future widespread power failure,” Mr. O’Leary says.

As power restoration efforts continue around the clock throughout the Northeast, Genscape is providing its clients, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as well as news agencies, with regular updates on the status of the entire US electricity grid.

Genscape is a privately-held company that was founded in 1999 in Louisville, Ky. by former energy traders Sean O’Leary and Sterling Lapinski to serve the unmet need for reliable, comprehensive supply-side information in the energy business.

 
GFI Energy Ventures Acquires Genscape, Inc.
 

LOUISVILLE, KY (August 4, 2003) Genscape Inc., the nation’s first and only supplier of real-time power plant output and transmission information, announced today that it has been acquired by an investor group led by GFI Energy Ventures, LLC. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Los Angeles-based GFI Energy Ventures originates and leads investments in businesses benefiting from and facilitating deregulation, competition, and technological change in the energy industry worldwide.

Louisville-based Genscape Inc. is the originator of real-time power supply information to support decision-making for energy traders, power plant and line owners and operators, regulators, and other energy market participants. The privately-held company was founded in 1999 by former energy traders Sean O’Leary and Sterling Lapinski to serve the unmet need for reliable, comprehensive supply-side information in the energy business. Collaborating with a number of the largest energy companies in the US, Genscape was able to develop an effective information delivery mechanism and launch its information delivery network in the spring of 2001.

Today, Genscape’s customers include the majority of the top 50 US power generating, trading, and marketing companies as well as federal and state entities. The company’s nationwide monitoring network currently contains real-time operating information on over 250 individual generating facilities and 20 strategic transmission lines.

According to GFI Energy Ventures Founding Principal Richard Landers, “Transparent and objective sources of market information are critical for smooth functioning of the energy markets, as the last few years of market turmoil have demonstrated. We are excited about the opportunity to back Genscape as it has emerged as the leading supplier of accurate and trustworthy information regarding the real-time status of generation and transmission assets throughout the US. Prudent market participants are realizing the value of Genscape’s proprietary information and it is becoming the indispensable source of generation and transmission data for traders, system operators, regulators, and other market participants. We are delighted to provide the capital and other support to help the Company meet this market need and continue to augment its suite of products and services that leverage off the information the Company’s proprietary system delivers. We think what Genscape is doing is both good business and very beneficial in the development of more transparent energy markets.”

“This involvement on the part of GFI validates Genscape’s competitive advantage and success in the domestic power market,” said Sean O’Leary, Genscape’s Chief Executive Officer. “Over the years GFI has shown the ability to add value by selecting a strong portfolio of leaders in complementary niches in the energy field and giving them the resources and support they need to grow. The partnership between our companies will be tremendously helpful in allowing Genscape to expand geographically and to move into parallel markets.”

Genscape’s first round venture capital funding was secured in November 2001. Louisville-based Chrysalis Ventures, a leading source of equity capital for growth companies in the Southeast and Midwest, led the investment. Chrysalis was joined by Louisville-based Prosperitas Investment Partners, LP and Anchorage Angels, both private equity funds located in Louisville, and Vectren Enterprises, Inc., an energy services company based in Evansville, Indiana.

According to Chrysalis Ventures Managing Director Bob Saunders, “We’re extremely pleased with the success of our investment, and wish Genscape well as it graduates from our portfolio. Departing CEO David Doctor, and founders Sean and Sterling, did a great job growing from a company with a handful of customers when we invested into a dominant player today. This equity sale results in an attractive return to our fund and our co-investors.”

About Genscape Inc.:
Genscape Inc. is the originator of real-time power supply information to support decision-making for energy traders, power plant and line owners and operators, regulators, and other energy market participants. The privately-held company was founded in 1999 in Louisville, KY by former energy traders Sean O’Leary and Sterling Lapinski to serve the unmet need for reliable, comprehensive supply-side information in the energy business. Genscape’s patent-pending technology collects power supply information using a network of remote, wireless devices to monitor multiple points on the transmission grid.

For more information, please visit www.genscape.com.

About GFI Energy Ventures, LLC:
GFI Energy Ventures, LLC has been an equity investor in established, industry-leading companies serving the energy market since 1995. GFI has originated over thirty investments in companies that provide the systems, software, equipment, and services needed by participants in the competitive energy market. GFI oversees a portfolio of companies with market value in excess of $2 billion and is the co-general partner with Oaktree Capital Management, LLC of the $554 million OCM/GFI Power Opportunities Fund, L.P.

For more information, please visit www.gfienergy.com.

 
Genscape Founders Win Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award
 

LOUISVILLE, KY (June 24, 2003) The two co-founders and the CEO of Genscape Inc. were recognized recently with Ernst & Young LLP's Southern Ohio and Kentucky Entrepreneur of the Year award. The event was held Tuesday night at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington. David A. Doctor, Sean O'Leary and Sterling Lapinski of Genscape Inc. were recognized as the winners in the Emerging Businesses category. Genscape is an energy information company that provides real-time data on the transmission and production of electricity.

Genscape is the first and only provider of real-time plant output and transmission line utilization data. Genscape’s patent-pending technology enables it to remotely sense the amount and direction of power plant output and flows across critical transmission lines. The company sells that information through its web-enabled subscription service, Power 2.2.

Genscape’s energy customers can use the company’s data to instantly determine the state of the U.S. power grid. The technology also helps power companies manage their own electricity generation more efficiently. Genscape’s information is available both on a real-time basis and historically.

The awards are given annually to recognize outstanding owners of fast-growing companies. Awards are given to business owners or operators "who have demonstrated excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their business and communities," the release said. Award winners are eligible for the National Entrepreneur of the Year competition. The winners of the national awards will be announced at an event in Palm Springs, Calif., on Nov. 22.

Ernst & Young is a national firm that provides accounting, consulting and other professional services.


Promises of “No Pay” Pay Off

By David Miller

Former energy traders Sean O’Leary and Sterling Lapinski founded the privately held company in 1999 in Louisville. “Sterling and I were energy traders who saw a real need for our product,” O’Leary said. “Rather than wait on someone else to develop a system, we chose to do it ourselves.”

Lapinski began his career trading bonds in New York City. He jumped to the energy business in 1997, early in that industry’s deregulation process, to take advantage of the rapidly changing and available markets. There he met O’Leary, who had worked for some of the early industry pioneering firms. The two worked together in energy trading at Southern Company, and in 1998 moved to Columbia Energy Corporation in Houston. They quickly developed one of the most successful trading groups in the industry, exceeding corporate profit objectives by more than 400 percent in volatile markets. Later, the two traders conceived the idea for Genscape as a solution to the lack of reliable information that plagued the energy industry at that time.

O’Leary and Lapinski funded Genscape’s research and development themselves and worked for nearly a year without pay. They recruited quality staff based on their vision, with the promise of no pay. Despite neither being an engineer, they developed patent-pending technology that serves as the basis for Genscape’s successful information service.

The biggest challenge faced by the entrepreneurs was “finding outstanding people to do all the things we think we can do, given the platform from which we have to build the business.”

The two founders recruited David Doctor, who had been teaching at the University of Louisville, as the company’s chief executive officer.
An entrepreneur in his own right, Doctor turned natural-gas marketing company EnTrade Corporation into Louisville’s largest privately held company before selling it to Tenneco in 1992. (He was named a 1989 Regional EOY Award Winner with EnTrade.) Doctor was president of Tenneco, until he left the company to invest in small businesses. He joined Genscape at the end of its research and development phase in 2001. Already during his tenure, Doctor has commercialized the founders’ concept, mainly through complex sales agreements; reorganized the company, transforming it from an S-Corp to a C-Corp; and raised millions from private investors.
First round venture capital funding came from Chrysalis Ventures, the largest venture capital firm in Kentucky, Indiana-based Vectren Enterprises and Louisville-based Prosperitas Investment Partners, LP and the Anchorage Angels.

The power of the Genscape approach was apparent even early in development, as the company’s initial customers took a leap of faith by prepaying for a service that didn’t exist. The pre-payments funded Genscape’s initial commercial development.

Today, the company has more than 50 large customers, including the majority of the nation’s top fifty energy companies and critical government agencies such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Homeland Security.

The Louisville-based company is expanding its information services to cover other energy markets such as natural gas, petroleum and coal.
Genscape’s corporate culture is a blend of trading floor and high-tech development. Most employees are under the age of 36, and each one is a shareholder though Genscape’s option and stock programs. Along with a full-service benefits program, the employees establish their own work schedules, respecting a “core time” of 1 to 5 p.m. each workday. Periodic Friday updates occur in an all staff stand-up meeting in which all staff contribute and listen.

O’Leary offered these words of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs: “Staring a business is a lot like standing on the high dive. It’s very intimidating, but once you jump, you want to keep doing it.”

 
Genscape Signs 50th Customer
Strong Growth in a Down Market
 

LOUISVILLE, KY (June 11, 2003) Genscape Inc, the nation’s first and only supplier of real-time power plant output and transmission information, reached a major milestone in May, passing the 50th customer mark for the first time. Genscape provides real-time information on over 270 of the country’s most significant power plants and transmission pathways through a web-based interface called Genscape Power 2.2.

While many wholesale power market participants are retrenching in order to weather the industry downturn, a large number of firms have recognized the value of Genscape’s subscription service for their day-to-day operations.

“No doubt about it, power market conditions have changed dramatically over the past 18 months,” says Michael McAuliffe, VP of Sales & Marketing for Genscape. “But fortunately Genscape continues to have an extremely aggressive acquisition rate. We’ve added 18 customers in 2003 through May, and expect this to increase as summer comes on and the market volatility intensifies. The fact that we have well over a 90% renewal rate is testament to the value of our product. We’re very thankful to our customers for their loyalty and their business.”

ABOUT POWER 2.2

Genscape Power 2.2 consists of technology that monitors the power grid and reports highly accurate estimates of the real-time output of power plants, flows over strategic transmission paths, and associated generation data. This information, unavailable to the marketplace prior to Genscape’s service, allows utilities, generators, transmission owners, and regulators to make timely, informed decisions, helping them better manage the production, trade, transmission, and regulation of electricity. Power 2.2 alerts users of plant events in real time via its interface, email, and instant messaging services. Power 2.2 allows users to download historical data on individual power plants, and Genscape also streams data feeds to subscribers to run in proprietary or third party analytic software.

BEYOND POWER

“We’re having a great year in domestic power sales,” says Sean O’Leary, Genscape’s co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer. “We’re not resting on our laurels, however, as Genscape intends to release a Power Version 2.3 system upgrade this fall while continuing to increase the size of the network. In addition to changes to our current domestic power offering, Genscape is also developing new products to satisfy needs in additional geographic and commodity markets.”

 
Genscape a Finalist for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® Award
 

LOUISVILLE, KY (May 16, 2003) Genscape Inc, the nation’s first and only supplier of data on the real-time status of America’s power generation facilities and transmission lines, has been selected as a finalist for one of the nation’s most prestigious business awards.

Based on the successful execution of a market-inspired innovation, Genscape’s management team has been chosen as finalists for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year® award for Kentucky and Southern Ohio. Each year Ernst & Young, through its Entrepreneur Of The Year® awards, seeks to recognize great business achievements around the world. Such accomplishments are made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit — the incredible depth and character that entrepreneurs possess as they develop new technologies, create faster ways to distribute goods and services, and improve the quality of life for people around them. The winners will be announced at the formal EOY Awards dinner to be held on June 17th.

Founded in 1999, Genscape was the creation of two former energy traders, Sean O’Leary and Sterling Lapinski, who recognized the need for transparency in the energy market. Relying on intuition and their knowledge of the market, they developed a proprietary monitoring device that is able to read the electric and magnetic fields that emanate from power lines. CEO David Doctor, a former Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® winner, joined Genscape in early 2001, prior to its commercialization stage.

Genscape produces an extremely accurate calculation of the real-time output of targeted power generating facilities and strategic transmission lines. To date, Genscape has built a nationwide monitoring network containing real-time operating information on 250 individual generating facilities and 20 strategic transmission points. The data is displayed graphically on Genscape’s web interface, Power 2.2, and is subscribed to by major utilities, power marketing groups, regulators, and other participants in the power industry. Genscape currently has 50 subscribed customers.

This year's National Entrepreneur Of The Year award winners will be announced at the 2003 Awards scheduled on November 20-23 in Palm Springs, CA. The overall national winner will join Entrepreneur Of The Year winners from around the world next June in Monte Carlo for the 4th annual World Entrepreneur Of The Year awards.

 
Genscape Signs the Department of Energy
Company Also Purchases Posita Power Technologies
 

LOUISVILLE, KY (FEBRURAY 3, 2003) – Genscape Inc, the nation’s sole supplier of real-time power plant output and transmission status information, has been selected by the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Assurance (OEA) to provide critical electricity infrastructure monitoring services.

Service Acquired As Part of
Homeland Security Effort

A critical component of the OEA’s mission is to strengthen Homeland Security through the application of science and technology to improve the reliability and security of the national energy infrastructure. Genscape will help the OEA achieve that mission by providing the OEA with critical, real-time information not available from any other source. “Previously the OEA had to wait for phone calls from utilities to report problems with their generating facilities or transmission lines” said Sean O’Leary, Genscape’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Now if a plant’s operation changes significantly, the OEA will know in real time, improving its ability to respond immediately to emergencies.”

Genscape’s information system, Genscape Power 2.2, monitors the real-time power output of power plants and the operational status of important power transmission lines, and reports relevant information to customers in real time through an online interface and through data feeds that drive third party applications. This information, which was unavailable to the public prior to the advent of Genscape’s service, allows customers to better manage the production, trade, transmission, and regulation of electricity. Genscape monitors and provides real-time information on most of the country’s significant power plants and power transmission pathways.

Genscape Purchases Posita Power
Technologies, Inc.

On Friday, January 31, Genscape acquired the assets of Posita Power Technologies, Inc. of Austin, Texas. Posita’s technology for the remote monitoring of high voltage transmission lines and the production of highly accurate estimates of transmission line and power plant operational status from the monitored data, combined with Genscape’s technology, provide Genscape a very strong base from which to continue the growth of its power monitoring and reporting business. Genscape’s consolidation of this technology makes Genscape the exclusive provider of real-time online power plant and transmission line information in the United States.

 
Genscape Home
 
Genscape The Web
Contents copyright Genscape, Inc. & Genscape International, Inc. 2002-2008©     US: 502.583.3435  EU: +31 (0) 20 524 4080
      contact Genscape